A Lake County sheriff’s deputy was forced to tase a man twice Sunday morning after spotting his vehicle at a known drug house.
Master Dep. Joe Brocato was on patrol when he spotted a white pickup truck with a license plate seizure order in place. He saw the same vehicle later in the morning traveling on Grays Airport Road. The driver, later identified as 33-year-old William Alan Labree Jr., noticed Brocato’s marked patrol vehicle and turned onto a dead-end street, a sheriff’s office report states.
As Brocato was approaching, the work truck, which had a company name of “A Job Well Done” printed on the driver’s side door, was coming back out of the dead-end street with no headlights in the rain. The deputy then conducted a traffic stop, the report says.
As Brocato was talking with Labree, of Umatilla, he kept his hand clinched to conceal something. After a brief struggle and two taser deployments, Labree was taken into custody under a nearby pool deck after fleeing. He was seen discarding a plastic baggie containing a crystallized substance which tested positive for methamphetamine, the report says.
Labree’s work truck was towed and he was transported to the Lake County Jail, where he was charged with resisting a law enforcement officer without violence, possession of a controlled substance without a prescription (methamphetamine), possession and/or use of drug equipment and concealing physical evidence. He was being held on $6,000 bond and is due in court Feb, 1 at 8:30 a.m., jail records show.
Labree also was arrested in July 2019 in the vicinity of U.S. Hwy. 27/441 and Griffin Avenue in Lady Lake for driving a pickup without proper registration or insurance. He claimed he had just purchased the truck and was on his way to register it. A Fruitland Park woman traveling with him was arrested for being in possession of a blue cut straw and a glass pipe, both with the residue of methamphetamine.
